Descartes ShipRush Supports Expansive Ecommerce Growth

As McCombs Supply Co. grew from a small TV repair business in 1953 to a thriving online replacement repair parts business, increasing order volumes were causing a shipping bottleneck and hindering growth. The company replaced its inefficient and time-consuming manual shipping practices with the Descartes ShipRush solution. By streamlining and automating order processing, McCombs was able to dramatically increase productivity, improve customer service, and successfully expand.

“I wish I’d had Descartes ShipRush from day one, as soon as I started selling on the Internet. Pulling orders off all our marketplaces is a piece of cake. We went from being able to ship 150 packages a day to 150 an hour. That is how much time we saved.”
Vice-President, McCombs Supply Company Inc.

Company Profile

McCombs Supply Company Inc.
Repair Parts for Residential and Commercial Appliances
Descartes Solutions
Descartes ShipRush™

About the Client

In business since 1953, McCombs Supply Co., Inc. offers replacement repair parts for dishwashers, dryers, ovens, refrigerators, washing machines, commercial refrigeration and cooking, HVAC, and more. The Lancaster-PA company supplies contractors, service technicians, housing developments, institutions, and do-it-yourselfers.

Quick Overview

• 6x Growth in Shipping Volumes
• Increase Productivity
• Bottom Line Boost

Results

• 6x Growth in Shipping Volumes
• Bottom Line Boost
• Heightened Customer Satisfaction

Supercharging Growth with Speed, Functionality, and Ease-of-Use

Adapting to Rapidly Increasing Shipping Volumes

Challenge: Adapting to Rapidly Increasing Shipping Volumes

When online sales began to grow in the early 2000s, third-generation business owner, Ken McCombs, III, saw another big opportunity for his company. Becoming an online merchant has been the next giant leap in McCombs’ success.

“At first we sold parts on our own website and a few other sites. We would download orders and process them by hand using pieced together shipping solutions. We’d often have to re-key information to generate labels and duplicate information in a separate customer database,” says Ken. “This was very inefficient and time-consuming. It was holding back our success.”

Solution: Supercharging Growth with Speed, Functionality, and Ease-of-Use

In 2009, Ken found the cloud-based Descartes ShipRush solution and it instantly made his life easier, helping him efficiently fulfill the increasing number of orders. “Descartes ShipRush makes it easy to accurately download all the information in just a few clicks, including the shipping address, delivery requirements, price and type/quantity of parts. We put a bar code on every package that Descartes ShipRush can recognize, then scan the job and hit ‘ship’. With cloud-based Descartes ShipRush, everyone can log in via a computer, phone or tablet to process orders and print postage labels.”

According to Ken, Descartes ShipRush has been key to enabling the company’s rapid growth. McCombs now sells appliance parts via its own brick-and-mortar warehouse store, the McCombs Supply website, and major online channels. McCombs ships more than 300,000 packages per year—and 95 percent of those shipments are through Descartes ShipRush.

Descartes ShipRush saves McCombs an enormous amount of time, dramatically boosting the supplier’s ability to grow. “Everything from order input to printing labels makes the whole process about 30 percent faster. And, I just added around 15,000 square feet of warehouse space, 8,000 of which is for shipping, including more packing stations and six more Descartes ShipRush stations.”

Fast order processing also allows McCombs to increase profits by offering express shipping, where customers are charged a premium. “When an express order comes in, we drop everything we are doing and get that order out immediately. McCombs can make 40 percent profit on shipping for items it ships out express,” notes Ken. To save on shipping costs, McCombs uses Descartes ShipRush’s Rate Dashboard, a one-screen view of all the carriers’ prices and delivery times to rate shop packages. This helps McCombs’ employees select the most efficient and cost-effective shipping option for each package. Ken estimates he saves about 10 percent on shipping every time he rate shops.

The Descartes ShipRush solution has enhanced McCombs’ customer service. It is much easier to cancel an order or change an address; employees can log in with any device and make changes or process returns immediately. Access to accurate customer order information with Descartes ShipRush also helps the company provide better customer service. “In emergencies, when it is zero degrees and someone needs a furnace part, accurately processing rush orders is especially important,” according to Ken.

Results:

With a cloud-based solution, customer orders can be easily amended or canceled from any phone or device. Easy access to accurate, up-to-date order information helps McCombs respond swiftly and efficiently to resolve any customer issues.